Just 35 percent of self-identified conservatives said they had a “great deal of trust in science” in 2010, a new report published in the journal American Sociological Review reveals. The finding marks a 28 percent decline since the first survey taken in 1974, “when 48 percent of conservatives—about the same percentage as liberals—trusted science.”
Source: ThinkProgress.org
Always Question Authority 
Science is only as good as the people doing it and all people are flawed. So maybe it’s the scientists these people distrust. Certainly, there have been many errors in science that people have believed true for years until someone discovered they weren’t. Take the issue pain, for example. Descartes proposed a model whereby you stick your finger in the fire and the pain message shoots up your arm to your brain. It wasn’t until the 20th century that researchers discovered that, no matter what part of your body is injured, all pain messages go to the dorsal horn in the small of your back and the message is relayed to the brain from there.
Then, of course, we have scientists who are quite willing to lie if it means getting a research grant to keep themselves alive. They will fudge their results to make them say what they want them to say. And then there are the ones who are just plain incompetent.
And, of course, science is limited in what it can do. It cannot define or explain the meaning of life, love, beauty, joy, etc. That’s the doman of the philosophers and theologians.
Therefore, it would be foolish to trust science and scientists all of the time and, given the title of your blog, suggesting that we question authority, maybe it’s a good thing that conservatives are doing just that when it comes to the authority of science and scientists.